(You can watch me play Broken Age Act 1 and part of Act 2 here)

The adventure game has had something of a resurgence in recent years. After being a dead genre since the late 90s, developers have started to realize how well it fits with the mobile marketplace. The basic gameplay mechanics of clicking things on-screen and dragging items out of your inventory to solve puzzles make quite a lot of sense on smartphones and tablets, where touching and dragging are the only real ways to interface with a game. Meanwhile, Telltale Games’ adventure game efforts ultimately led to their re-alignment as a Bioware-esque creator of player-driven narratives with the success of The Walking Dead. However, the basic “click around a screen to explore the environment” model of the classic adventure game still shines through these later efforts.

Despite this resurgence, though, adventure games are simply not marketable enough to greenlight without an attached license (like Telltale’s Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us, Borderlands, and Game of Thrones series) or a very small budget (like most mobile games). While an adventure game would never require the budget of a Call of Duty game, the game industry somewhat mirrors the modern-day film industry in that moderate-budget projects are no longer considered viable. So when Double Fine, headed up by adventure game writer and legend Tim Schafer, decided that they wanted to build an adventure game, they went to Kickstarter.

The “Double Fine Adventure” which would ultimately become Broken Age was one of the biggest successes in the history of Kickstarter, and ultimately pulled in $3.3 million. However, like most Kickstarter projects, Schafer and his crew realized partway through development that it was not enough to complete their vision for the game. This led the team to release the first half of Broken Age, called Act 1, on Steam as an “early access” game. People could purchase the game at full price, play the first half immediately, and then have access to the second half as soon as it was finished using the funds that they had already paid. There was some controversy online over this decision, but it ultimately paid off: Double Fine was able to complete the game, and now backers and early-access buyers alike can play the whole thing from start to finish.

Tim Schafer has been very public about the fact that, despite being released in two halves, Broken Age is one complete game, and should be played and thought of as one single piece. This is how I played through Act 2 last week, but even still, it can be hard not to think of the two halves as separate entities when they were released 15 months apart (Act 1 in January 2014 and Act 2 in April 2015).

Broken Age Act 1 was a resounding success, a game that hearkened back to the mechanics of adventure games but also innovated in its own right. The decision to build the game around two seemingly-disparate plotlines, each with their own protagonist, was a great call for both the story and the gameplay. Typically when you get stuck in an adventure game, you end up wandering around the environment clicking on anything and everything. Being able to switch to another character with fresh puzzles allows you to clear your head and alleviate some of your frustration.

It’s also a decision that led to an awesome, surprising finale. Finishing Act 1 and knowing that there was a long wait ahead further inflated the expectations for Act 2. Both premises of the game had essentially been shattered, so how was Act 2 going to explain things? What was the game even about anymore? Ultimately, all the time and speculation probably hurt Act 2, as questions are often more exciting than answers.

Broken Age Act 2 certainly plays like a continuation of the first one, gradually increasing the difficulty and tying up the storyline, but the game makes a few missteps along the way. While the more complicated puzzles are typically better and more rewarding than in the first game, there are some puzzles where the solution is a bit too abstract or, within the world of the game, illogical. I remained stuck on one puzzle for over an hour, for instance, because I needed to talk to a character in a completely different area in which I had already exhausted all dialogue options. The game had added another one, but that was not at all clear without running around the environments, clicking on everything I’d already clicked on.

Even more baffling, there are a few puzzles which require switching characters to gain knowledge to apply as the other character. The problem is that, narratively, the characters are not in communication with one another. So while it makes sense that a player could be expected to take details from one character’s environment to apply it to the other character, there’s no rational way that the characters would be able to figure them out by themselves. If you’re trying to be logical about the puzzles within the framework of the game’s narrative, this might be a tricky point.

Finally, there’s the story. As mentioned above, Act 2 is at an immediate disadvantage because, after wondering where the story could go for over a year, there is no way for it to really live up to people’s imaginations. For what it’s worth, Act 2 is surprisingly upfront with its narrative. It doesn’t lie or obfuscate, and characters are perfectly open about their intentions. Everything from Act 1 is thoroughly explained, and your goals are generally clear. It ultimately has a bit of trouble with its ending, though. The last thing you see is a moment of emotional catharsis, and the game certainly doesn’t hint at a sequel, but the story itself is still largely incomplete.

For all of my complaints about the ending and the second act’s puzzle design, both acts are absolutely overflowing with character and charm. Tim Shafer and the rest of Double Fine have proven themselves again and again as some of the best writers and storytellers in gaming. Even characters who serve a puzzle function and little else are distinct and funny, and much of the humor comes out of the characters rather than cheap jokes. The vocal cast, which includes Elijah Wood, Jack Black, Pendleton Ward, and Wil Wheaton, to name a few, is uniformly excellent, adding even more character to an already great script.

It’s a gorgeous game, too. Broken Age is very smart about its budget, working with a simple, undemanding engine and a neat water-color inspired look. Once again, “charm” is the key word here, with every location exuding as much character as possible. Broken Age is heavily evocative of the best games in its genre, such as the Monkey Island series, or Grim Fandango (both games in which Tim Schafer was not-coincidentally involved). While it has its shortcomings, it makes me eager to see what else Double Fine can do with the genre.